Is there such a thing as moral superiority in politics?

This question has been on my mind for ~20 years. I don't recall writing about it, but it usually lurks in the background of my conscious mind. This question and what I found over many years directly led me to the idea of an anti-ideology ideology for politics. I call it pragmatic rationalism, (PR) which I usually referred to in blog posts as being grounded in morals. Others have come to a similar mindset, so I'm not unique.

The big problem with PR that probably forever dooms it to political insignificance is the vast differences that people have when it comes to most moral values or principles. Reality is often at odds with professed beliefs and values. My search for an ideology that seemed reasonable at least in theory had to deal with the constant plague on mankind called essentially contested concepts (ECCs). In short, ECCs refer to concepts that people agree about in general, but can never agree on in particulars. Wikipedia describes the ECC plague like this:

Essentially contested concepts involve widespread agreement on a concept (e.g., "fairness"), but not on the best realization thereof. They are "concepts the proper use of which inevitably involves endless disputes about their proper uses on the part of their users", and these disputes "cannot be settled by appeal to empirical evidence, linguistic usage, or the canons of logic alone."

A 2006 political science research paper commented:

Conceptual confusion in the social sciences—and certainly in political science—is a major source of difficulty in both theory and empirical analysis. The literature is replete with concepts that are applied inconsistently. This in turn influences the coherence of research and the cumulation of findings in the study of politics. .... On one level, these problems may be seen as deriving from a straightforward failure to specify the relationship between ‘term’ and ‘meaning’, involving confusion about concepts. Scholars are sometimes inconsistent in their own usage, or they simply fail to grasp the definitions employed by other researchers.

ECCs include most or nearly all moral values or principles. Most key morals or principles in politics appear to be ECCs. Examples include democracy, justice, rule of law, citizenship, war, genocide, abortion, freedom, equality, free speech, hate speech, honesty, dishonesty, ethical, unethical, constitutional, transparency, opacity, truth, lies, rationality, the public interest (or general welfare) and so on. Although moral values are generally internally consistent, political values are often inconsistent (hypocritical?) because politicians adjust their positions for strategic or self-interested reasons. In my mind, moral values are more important than political values, but our corrupted pay-to-play two party political system does not operate that way.

All of that suggests that moral superiority in politics is an ECC or a meaningless concept. From that point of view, one simply stops thinking about political morals or principles. One just fights it out, regardless of hypocrisy or irrationality in words and deeds used in the fight. Most political advocates and pundits, especially radicals, ideologues, kleptocrats and authoritarians usually (~97% of the time?) claim moral superiority, but that is just a smoke screen for their agendas. The main agendas are usually (~95% of the time?) getting more wealth and/or power, usually more of both. They usually do not care much about moral vales when they are inconvenient. 

Despite the plague of ECCs and how our political system really works, one can argue that there is an at least partly objective basis to assign moral superiority to words and deeds. Morally superior is basically what PR is designed to be. How can moral superiority be possible in the face of ECCs and corrupted politics? It is possible to see moral differences in individuals and groups by looking at what people say they believe in and how they act. 

For example, most American radical right authoritarian elites and rank and file say they are fighting for democracy, truth, the rule of law and equal justice, based on facts and sound reasoning. Every one of those moral values is an ECC, including the concept of a fact. But how well do their actions accord with their self-professed political principles or moral values? When Republican Party elites and most of the rank and file claim the 2020 election was stolen and the 1/6 coup attempt was "legitimate political discourse", how well does that synch up with defending democracy, truth, the rule of law and equal justice, based on facts and sound reasoning? In my opinion, not very well. In fact, not at all.

Is it fair and rational to look at disconnects between openly professed moral values and how well actions align with those morals? It seems fair to me. After all, those who claim to support democracy and the rule of law but actually intend to destroy it are far from consistent. Why can't one judge them? They exert power over everyone based on their self-professed moral values. They claim what they want and do is in the best interest of everyone. But what they do usually directly contradicts the moral values they claim authority to stand on.

And what about those deceived among the rank and file? They sincerely believe that they are fighting for democracy, truth, the rule of law and equal justice, based on facts and sound reasoning. In fact, they fight for the opposite based mostly on lies and crackpottery. They are sucked in by irrational crackpottery like "you have to destroy it before you can fix it", and lies like "the 2020 election was stolen" and other authoritarian propaganda. Are they morally blameless in this? Does being deceived absolve one of moral sin? Do adults have no responsibility for their political actions because they are deceived? If not, then exactly what absolves the millions of the deceived that drives the authoritarian wealth and power movement? Fear or bigotry fomented by propaganda? 

In my opinion, there is such a thing as moral superiority in politics. There is moral culpability for political actions, whether they are grounded in deceit and/or ignorance. Essentially all of the authoritarian elites know exactly what they are doing. There are very few deceived in that group. They want some form of kleptocratic authoritarianism, but they rely heavily on false claims of love and respect for democracy, the rule of law and etc. 

Qs: Is moral superiority[1] in politics a meaningful concept, if one puts heavy weight on respect for facts, true truths and sound reasoning, convenient or not? What if one puts heavy weight on respect for facts, true truths, sound reasoning and belief in democracy (e.g., reasonable compromise) over authoritarianism (e.g., no compromise)?  

Footnote: 

1. Some researchers believe that belief in personal moral superiority, which most people have, is a powerful illusion. A 2016 research paper comments:

Most people strongly believe they are just, virtuous, and moral; yet regard the average person as distinctly less so. This invites accusations of irrationality in moral judgment and perception—but direct evidence of irrationality is absent. Here, we quantify this irrationality and compare it against the irrationality in other domains of positive self-evaluation. Participants (N = 270) judged themselves and the average person on traits reflecting the core dimensions of social perception: morality, agency, and sociability. Adapting new methods, we reveal that virtually all individuals irrationally inflated their moral qualities, and the absolute and relative magnitude of this irrationality was greater than that in the other domains of positive self-evaluation. Inconsistent with prevailing theories of overly positive self-belief, irrational moral superiority was not associated with self-esteem. Taken together, these findings suggest that moral superiority is a uniquely strong and prevalent form of “positive illusion,” but the underlying function remains unknown.  

Most people believe they are just, virtuous, and moral. These beliefs demand scientific attention for several reasons. For one, in contrast to other domains of positive self-belief, they likely contribute to the severity of human conflict. When opposing sides are convinced of their own righteousness, escalation of violence is more probable, and the odds of resolution are ominously low (Pinker, 2011; Skitka, Bauman, & Sargis, 2005). .... Such is the extent of this phenomenon that violent criminals consider themselves more moral than law-abiding citizens living in the community (Sedikides, Meek, Alicke, & Taylor, 2014).

The point being that the concept of belief in moral superiority is accepted in science, but it is plagued by subjectivity and ECCs. The question I pose here asks if persons and groups in politics can be reasonably judged from an at least partly objective point of view, i.e., respect for facts, true truths, sound reasoning and belief in democracy over authoritarianism.

Regarding the failure of institutions and constitutions

From what I can tell, a small but maybe growing number of reasonable people are starting to question the failure of key democratic institutions and/or the constitution itself. Most elite authoritarian radical right activists are doing the same, but with intent to destroy democracy and the institutions and laws that support it. The questioning on the other side looks to support democracy and its implementing institutions. 

One commentator, Alex Pareene, is a pro-democracy advocate who writes about this issue, which I consider to be critically important:

The Institutionalist's Dilemma

On trusting the process after it's openly failed

Nothing has fundamentally changed about how the Senate “works” since George Packer wrote the damning portrait of a dysfunctional institution that I reference in that old Salon piece. More than a decade later, Senate institutionalists still make up the majority of the Democratic caucus, and they still believe the way to make the institution work is not to change its rules but to somehow change the nature of the opposition.

So, in some sense, I gave up on the Senate. I spend less time carefully making the arguments for reforming it.

When we all learned that the far-right majority on the Supreme Court plans to gut the right to privacy that undergirds legal abortion access in the United States, a few patterns emerged in people’s responses. Most liberals were furious. Others in the media were outraged—on behalf of the Supreme Court, because they feared the leaking of a draft opinion could undermine the public’s faith in the “legitimacy” of the institution.

Many of those takes were bad faith from conservatives sort of desperately reaching for a talking point, but some of them were quite sincere. This is the mindset of the institutionalist. It is important that people retain faith in our institutions, which does not mean that our institutions should work to earn people’s faith, but instead that people shouldn’t hear about it when they don’t. This attitude is especially common in lawyers, who, as a profession, turned “nothing is true, everything is permitted” into a professional ethic. And of course, many elected officials, and especially many Democrats, are lawyers.

One of the more consequential contradictions of the Democratic Party is that the vast majority of its staffers, consultants, electeds, and media avatars, along with a substantial portion of its electoral base, are institutionalists. They believe, broadly, in The System. The System worked for them, and if The System’s outputs are bad, it is because we need more of the right sort of people to join or be elected to enter The System. But when the party does manage to win majorities, it depends on support from a substantial number of anti-system people. Barack Obama defeated the Clintons with this sacred knowledge, before he started reading David Brooks. (emphasis added)

Institutionalists, in my experience, have trouble reaching an anti-system person, because they think being against The System is an inherently adolescent and silly mindset. But believing in things like “the integrity of the Supreme Court” has proven to be, I think, much sillier, and much more childish. (emphasis added)

In the beginning of Joe Biden’s presidency a lot of very intelligent people tried to come up with ideas for how to change the Supreme Court, which is poised to spend years eroding the regulatory state and chipping away at civil rights. Expand it, perhaps. Or marginalize it. President Joe Biden, a committed institutionalist, formed a commission of legal scholars—from across the ideological spectrum, of course—to investigate what ought to be done about it. They failed to come up with any answers. “Lawmakers,” the commission wrote, “should be cautious about any reform that seems aimed at the substance of Court decisions or grounded in interpretations of the Constitution over which there is great disagreement in our political life.” You might be mad at the Court because of the decisions it produces, but it’s essential that everyone still trusts the processes that led to them.

 

This was a white flag. I think some people in the White House have some sick hope that the end of Roe will galvanize the midterm electorate. Something like that may indeed happen. But if they wish to understand why the president has been bleeding youth support for the last year they should try to imagine these young people (and “young”, at this point, has expanded to like 45) not as the annoying and hyper-engaged freaks they see on Twitter every day, but as ones they don’t see anywhere, because, having been urged to pay furious attention by people in the party, they discovered that those people had absolutely no realistic plans to overcome entrenched, systemic obstacles to progress.

The legitimacy crisis is that our institutions are illegitimate. For my entire adult life, beginning with Bush v. Gore, our governing institutions have been avowedly antidemocratic and the left-of-center party has had no answer for that plain fact; no strategy, no plan, except to beg the electorate to give them governing majorities, which they then fail to use to reform the antidemocratic governing institutions. They often have perfectly plausible excuses for why they couldn’t do better. But that commitment to our existing institutions means they can’t credibly claim to have an answer to this moment. “Give us (another) majority and hope Clarence Thomas dies” is a best-case scenario, but not exactly a sales pitch. (emphasis added)

This line of reasoning resonates strongly with me. I see this core problem the about the same way that Pareene sees it. He saw the problem with the system years before I independently came to about the same beliefs. He sees the whole picture more clearly than my still incomplete thinking on this issue. 

Channel note: I'm baaaaaack, sort of

SCENE 1: The exciting action causing the injury, just a notch below the intensity of action in The Terminator: A few days ago I sprained/strained my left shoulder and bicep moving a heavy box from one place to another. That was real dumb. Pain started immediately but flared into intolerable the next day.

This was close in intensity to my action scene

SCENE 2: The exciting medical drama, like the TV show House: I'm not sure if it was a sprain or strain. The interwebs indicates that the two are overlapping things. The doctor called it a sprain based on X-rays, so I'll go with that. 

I was close to this level of medical action

My ER doctor's charming bedside manner

telling me to stop wasting his time or the 

oxygen I was breathing in his ER room

(I think he wanted me to stop breathing?

My div is a tough old geezer, probably ~35 years old)

Anyway, the pain was so intense I couldn't even keyboard and didn't feel like blogging. I got some wuss pain pill, naproxen and a muscle relaxant. From what I could tell neither drug did squat for the pain. The most effective treatment by far was to sit still and not move. But today, something changed and most of the pain faded to just a menacing little gremlin waiting for me to do something stupid with my left arm. 

The gremlin is about a 3 according to this scientifically 

precise measuring stick

Before today, the flares were about a 9 if I moved wrong, 

but pretty stable at 6.5 (not 6 or 7) for a couple of days if I didn't move much

So, today and tomorrow and until the gremlin goes away, I'll try to refrain from doing something stupid with my left arm. Otherwise, we can go back to exciting action causing injury.

Thanks to all for your kind words and support. 

 

Biden’s Very Trumpian Response to the Peaceful Student Protests

He’s explicitly demonizing nonviolent demonstrators and implicitly supporting the disproportionate and violent police response.

Fr. The New Republic 5/3/24 

On Tuesday evening, dozens of NYPD officers stormed Columbia University’s Hamilton Hall, which pro-Palestinian demonstrators had occupied earlier that day. Some officers entered the building with their guns drawn; one officer accidentally fired his weapon, thinking he was turning on a flashlight. That same evening, pro-Israel counterprotesters attacked an encampment at UCLA, shooting fireworks and mace at the students while police did nothing; a day later the police entered the encampment, arresting over 100 people. On Wednesday, at New Hampshire’s Dartmouth University, police pushed over and body-slammed a 65-year-old Jewish studies professor [who is past chairperson of the Jewish Studies Dept.-ed.] and then charged her with resisting arrest.

These scenes have been repeated across the country. Over the last three weeks, encampments protesting Israel’s bombing and starvation campaign against civilians in Gaza have sprouted up at over 100 colleges and universities. These protests have been controversial but peaceful—there are teach-ins and movie screenings. And college administrators, panicked about angry donors and opportunistic politicians from both parties, have responded to the tents popping up on their quads by calling in armed police—often under the bogus pretense that violent “outside agitators” have infiltrated the camps—who arrest students and, in some instances, the faculty members trying to protect them. More than 2,000 protesters, many of them students, have been arrested since the demonstrations began less than three weeks ago. 

On Thursday, in his first unscripted remarks about these events, President Biden delivered a forceful message in which he defended students’ “right to protest” and added, “People have the right to get an education, the right to get a degree, the right to walk across the campus safely without fear of being attacked.” He’s absolutely right: Students have the right to peaceably assemble on their own campus without worry of being assaulted by police.

The only problem is that Biden, the self-appointed defender of American democracy, was actually condemning the students themselves. He said they don’t have “the right to cause chaos,” when in fact the chaos on campuses across America is being overwhelmingly caused by the police—as well as the people who are directing and backing the police, a group that includes purportedly liberal school administrators, Democratic mayors and governors, and even Biden himself. It has been a shameful week for the establishment left, and one we may all look back on when the election results come in on November 5.

The Democratic Party’s best electoral argument in 2024 is no different from four years ago. The Republican Party is in the grip of a two-bit authoritarian and aspiring strongman intent on using the state to crush opposition wherever he sees it. Openly disdainful of democracy and pluralism, Donald Trump has already tried to steal one election, expresses a desire to arrest or deport his political opponents, and do I need to keep going? Biden and the Democratic Party are the country’s most powerful bulwark against this growing extremism, which is hardly limited to Trump himself; practically the entire GOP is in his grip. 

In June 2020, as demonstrations spread across the country in the aftermath of the police murder of George Floyd, Biden gave the best speech of his campaign. “We need to distinguish between legitimate peaceful protest and opportunistic violent destruction,” he said. “And we must be vigilant about the violence that’s being done by the incumbent president to our democracy and to the pursuit of justice.” He then attacked Trump for using riot police to clear a protest outside the White House so he could do his infamous photo op holding the Bible that he’s never read.

It was a similar message to the one Biden delivered on Thursday—except that you’d be hard pressed to find many instances of uninstigated violence by student protesters over these past few weeks. Meanwhile, there is ample, indisputable evidence of police violence against student protesters. At UCLA, police fired rubber bullets at demonstrators, causing one student to require 11 staples to close a head wound. At Arizona State University, four Muslim students had their hijabs ripped off by officers. At New York’s City College, police shattered one protester’s ankle and broke the teeth of two others. Student journalists have been pepper-sprayed, beaten, and arrested at some protests. At many, reporters are locked out altogether—a grotesque assault on the press’s ability to inform the public and uphold democracy.

In his speech this week, Biden attempted to define what he meant by violence and chaos—and it wasn’t what I just described. “Vandalism, trespassing, breaking windows, shutting down campuses, forcing the cancellation of classes and graduations—none of this is a peaceful protest,” he said. Misdemeanors like vandalism or trespassing—a reference to the occupation of Hamilton Hall—surely don’t warrant hundreds of NYPD officers in riot gear. Moreover, classes were canceled at Columbia in large part because of the police presence on campus. If anyone caused a disruption to education at Columbia, it was its embattled president, Minouche Shafik, whose panicked response escalated the situation dramatically. And the only commencement that has been called off was at the University of Southern California, which did so after the controversy generated by its decision to block its pro-Palestinian valedictorian from speaking.

It is not difficult to understand why students are protesting. Tens of thousands of Gazans have been killed, at least as many are starving and lack access to health care, and most of the Strip has been destroyed—including all of its universities. This has happened with the full diplomatic and financial support of the U.S. government, which provided many of the weapons responsible for this carnage. And yet, when thousands of students across the country peacefully organize protests against these atrocities, leading Democrats—including Biden himself—have responded by demonizing them, tarring them with unsubstantiated or exaggerated accusations of antisemitism and cheering on their arrests.

The protests are politically inconvenient for Biden, who is trailing in most polls and has struggled to hold together a Democratic Party that is deeply divided over Israel. But his callous response—remember, this is a politician who prides himself on empathy—is only widening that rift. The police response has been wildly and unquestionably disproportionate. It is inherently undemocratic, not to mention disappointing coming from the head of party that a few short years ago was condemning the excessive use of police force against nonviolent, unarmed civilians. It cuts against everything Biden and his party theoretically stand for in the fight against Trump and the rise of right-wing authoritarianism. It is, in fact, Trumpian.

Alex Shephard is senior editor of The New Republic. His work has also appeared in New York, The Atlantic, The Nation and GQ.

Link to article at The New Republic

 

 

Channel note: Out sick

 I've got a major injury. Ouch, seriously. Will be out at least today and tomorrow.

Opinion poll: Voter fear; Radicalization of Catholicism?; Forced birth war update

NPR reports that poll data indicates that fear is a significant concern among voters:

NPR poll: Democrats fear fascism, 

and Republicans worry about a lack of values

The fear factor is real in America, but Democrats and Republicans are scared for the country's future for different reasons, the latest NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll finds.

They also believe very differently about what children who will inherit that future should be taught.

Looking at this year's presidential election, the survey also found big shifts with key voter groups, along generational, racial and educational lines.

It also explored how third-party candidates and so-called "double haters" — who have unfavorable ratings of both President Biden and former President Donald Trump — could affect the race.

Finally, the poll finds a jump in Republicans now believing Trump has done something unethical, as he continues to contend with dozens of criminal charges and legal troubles. The number of Republicans saying Trump has done something unethical has jumped 12 points since February, from 34% to 46%. Still, only 8% of Republicans think he's done something illegal, compared to almost half of respondents overall (47%). A whopping 77% overall think Trump has done something illegal or at least unethical, and a majority believes the investigations into his conduct are fair.

Biden's 2-point lead with all adults and 5-point lead with registered voters evaporates when RFK Jr. and others are considered. RFK Jr. takes in 11% of the vote, which is about how much he's been registering on average in previous Marist polls and other surveys. It's no secret that there's a lot of cynicism and disaffection among many voters. Highlighting the country's partisanship, respondents said both men essentially represent equal threats to democracy, and majorities say they dislike both.

Assuming the data is meaningful somehow, whether all of that collectively is good, bad or about equally mixed is not obvious to me. Any thoughts? I just keep getting feelings of unease from a lot of the news these days.

________________________________________________________

________________________________________________________

An AP article reports about what appears to be a surge of radical fundamentalism in the American Catholic church:

‘A step back in time': America’s Catholic Church 

sees an immense shift toward the old ways

MADISON, Wis. (AP) — It was the music that changed first. Or maybe that’s just when many people at the pale brick Catholic church in the quiet Wisconsin neighborhood finally began to realize what was happening.

The choir director, a fixture at St. Maria Goretti for nearly 40 years, was suddenly gone. Contemporary hymns were replaced by music rooted in medieval Europe.

So much was changing. Sermons were focusing more on sin and confession. Priests were rarely seen without cassocks. Altar girls, for a time, were banned.

At the parish elementary school, students began hearing about abortion and hell.

“It was like a step back in time,” said one former parishioner, still so dazed by the tumultuous changes that began in 2021 with a new pastor that he only spoke on condition of anonymity.

Across the U.S., the Catholic Church is undergoing an immense shift. Generations of Catholics who embraced the modernizing tide sparked in the 1960s by Vatican II are increasingly giving way to religious conservatives who believe the church has been twisted by change, with the promise of eternal salvation replaced by guitar Masses, parish food pantries and casual indifference to church doctrine.

The shift, molded by plummeting church attendance, increasingly traditional priests and growing numbers of young Catholics searching for more orthodoxy, has reshaped parishes across the country, leaving them sometimes at odds with Pope Francis and much of the Catholic world.

The changes are not happening everywhere. There are still plenty of liberal parishes, plenty that see themselves as middle-of-the-road. Despite their growing influence, conservative Catholics remain a minority.

This is discomforting. Conservative Catholicism, whatever it is, strikes me as inherently anti-democratic and authoritarian. That mindset seems to be similar to, or about the same as, America's radical right authoritarian wealth and power movement, roughly Trump and his radicalized Republican Party. The mindset also seems to align with the NPR poll data discussed above. 

It is now obvious that America's radical right authoritarian movement is completely comfortable with harsh, aggressive minority rule over the objections of the majority of Americans. In my opinion, that is a solid evidence of anti-democratic authoritarianism. 

________________________________________________________

________________________________________________________

Forced birth advocates are getting very aggressive. The WaPo reports about an apparently new tactic to stop abortions in states where it is legal (not paywalled):

Texas man files legal action to probe ex-partner’s 

out-of-state abortion

The previously unreported petition reflects a potential new antiabortion strategy to block women from ending their pregnancies in states where abortion is legal

As soon as Collin Davis found out his ex-partner was planning to travel to Colorado to have an abortion in late February, the Texas man retained a high-powered antiabortion attorney — who court records show immediately issued a legal threat.

If the woman proceeded with the abortion, even in a state where the procedure remains legal, Davis would seek a full investigation into the circumstances surrounding the abortion and “pursue wrongful-death claims against anyone involved in the killing of his unborn child,” the lawyer wrote in a letter, according to records.

Now, Davis has disclosed his former partner’s abortion to a state district court in Texas, asking for the power to investigate what his lawyer characterizes as potentially illegal activity in a state where almost all abortions are banned.

The previously unreported petition was submitted under an unusual legal mechanism often used in Texas to investigate suspected illegal actions before a lawsuit is filed. The petition claims Davis could sue either under the state’s wrongful-death statute or the novel Texas law known as Senate Bill 8 that allows private citizens to file suit against anyone who “aids or abets” an illegal abortion.

The decision to target an abortion that occurred outside of Texas represents a potential new strategy by antiabortion activists to achieve a goal many in the movement have been working toward since Roe v. Wade was overturned: stopping women from traveling out of state to end their pregnancies. Crossing state lines for abortion care remains legal nationwide.

Anti-abortion advocates constitute a powerful, aggressive minority that is not ever going to stop trying to impose forced birth law nationwide. These people are theocratic zealots fighting God's sacred war. They do not compromise. If this minority of people ever get enough power, America will be ruled under the iron fist of intrusive Christian Sharia law administered by a corrupt, cruel male Taliban. 

Christian theocrats do not believe 

in that reasoning

Their religion does prohibit everyone

from whatever it makes illegal